Source: Radio New Zealand
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. RNZ / Mark Papalii
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the government will “think about” possible sales of government assets.
While Luxon has ruled out an asset sales this term, he told Morning Report on Monday that governments needed to be able to “recycle” assets.
He said he is up for a conversation on whether there should be sales with the money redeployed to creating new ones.
His comments come after he was questioned about a Treasury Report last week which raised whether the government should sell state assets that are under-performing or no longer needed.
Treasury said there needed to be better asset management, that some assets were under-performing or poorly maintained.
“A formal capital recycling programme may be useful where government reallocates or reinvests capital from existing assets or infrastructure projects into new opportunities or projects to meet policy objectives,” the report said.
Luxon said New Zealand did need need a “more mature conversation” about asset sales.
“Owning everything we own forever is not the right thing to do, I suspect.”
He said governments have huge money tied up in assets and governments needed to refresh or recycle their holdings.
“To be able to sell an asst in order to buy or create a new asset is a good thing. Governments own a lot of stuff – there’s obviously some we must own. But over time you want to cycle assets in and out of a portfolio and that is a good conversation to have.”
Luxon said he suspects National would go into the election with policies in this space.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
